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Contact: LaVenia LaVelle                                                                FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

at 212-445-4859                                                                               Sunday, March 16, 2008

COVER: "THE PETRAEUS GENERATION"

BEYOND THE SURGE: A NEW GENERATION OF OFFICERS STRUGGLES TO REMAKE THE U.S. ARMY

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'YOU CAN'T KILL YOUR WAY OUT OF AN INSURGENCY,' GEN. DAVID

PETRAEUS TELLS NEWSWEEK

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FIVE YEARS INTO THE WAR IN IRAQ, SOLDIERS are now as comfortable with handshakes as HAND GRENADES, BUT THEIR SUCCESS IS INHERENTLY FRAGILE

New York - Five years after the war in Iraq began Gen. David Petraeus has changed the way his officers think and the way the U.S. Army fights, Baghdad Bureau Chief Babak Dehghanpisheh and Editor-At-Large Evan Thomas report in the current issue of Newsweek.

"You can't kill your way out of an insurgency," General David Petraeus told Newsweek in an interview in his Baghdad headquarters. He has moved soldiers out of their secure megabases and into small outposts deep inside once alien and hostile neighborhoods, and he has ordered his men out of their armored convoys. "Walk ... Stop by, don't drive by," says Petraeus, reading from a "guidance" he is drafting for his soldiers, Newsweek reports in the March 24 issue "The Petraeus Generation" (on newsstands Monday, March 17). The objective is no longer to take a hill or storm a citadel, but to win over the people.

But this new way of war needs a new kind of warrior, Newsweek reports. Five years into the longest conflict the U.S. military has fought since Vietnam, young officers have been blooded by multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have learned, often on their own, operating with unprecedented independence, the intricacies of Muslim cultures. Brought up in rigid, flag-waving warrior cultures that taught right from wrong, black from white, they had to learn to operate amid moral ambiguity. Most recently, and hardest of all, they've had to reach out and ally themselves with men who have tried and often succeeded in killing their own soldiers. It is hard to overstate the achievement of this Petraeus Generation of officers, but their success, is terribly fragile. And while the skills these American officers have gained aren't critical in murky conflicts like Iraq, they are not universally valued or trusted within the Pentagon.

               One of the Petraeus generation of officers, Captain Tim Wright is a doctor's son and was a Latin scholar with a 3.8 average in high school. Admitted to Princeton, he chose to go to West Point instead, drawn to the discipline of the U.S. Military Academy. But Wright is not the warrior he expected to be or that he was first trained to be. When he became a young infantry officer out of West Point in 2000, he entered an Army whose mission was to win wars by overwhelming force. This was the Army that blasted its way into Baghdad in less than three weeks in the spring of 2003, Newsweek reports. It's also the army that found itself bogged down in a bloody insurgency for the next four years. Wright, 30, was a captain in Baghdad last spring when the situation seemed bleakest. "That's the tough thing about this job," says Wright, blinking back tears. "If you f--- up, sometimes people die."

               When Petraeus drafted his counterinsurgency doctrine in 2006, he was able to draw on the experiences of resourceful frontline officers like Wright. "All the stuff in the Petraeus manual, we had kind of figured it out there [in Afghanistan]," says Wright. "It was all the stuff we had seen work on the ground."

               American officers learned very similar lessons in battling the Viet Cong. But much of that knowledge was simply lost. "It's said we fought that war nine times, a year at a time," says Petraeus, noting that because they had been drafted rather than volunteered, many combat-hardened troops left the Army as soon as their yearlong tours in Vietnam were up. By contrast, with the Army stretched thin and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on, soldiers like Wright find themselves heading back into the fight for a second (or third or fourth) tour. "They have a level of experience that I don't think our Army has had at that rank certainly since Vietnam, and maybe not even then," says Petraeus.

Under his command, Petraeus says, "there is not only a tolerance for initiative and independent action, there is encouragement." Implicit within that, he says, is "the empowerment of commanders at local levels...to make deals." Even Captain Wright has helped bring peace to the violence-scarred Baghdad neighborhood of Bayaa-where distinguishing between "reconcilables and irreconcilables," as Petraeus puts it, wasn't easy-by allying himself with a Sadrist leader Wright refers to as "Mr. X."

Newsweek reports the drop in violence since Petraeus took command in Iraq is dramatic and irrefutable. But as he would be the first to admit, it's been won by cutting all these side deals, buying off former and potential fighters with temporary salaries and the promise of jobs in the Army and police. Already there are frictions. Many of our new allies still mistrust the Iraqi Army and police. Tensions are common, even open firefights. And within the US military, Petraeus has fought many battles with his bosses-including CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon, who resigned last week over getting the resources needed to make his counterinsurgency strategy work. As his heirs move up the ranks, they will face similar struggles in the future.

Also in the cover package: Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria looks at how real the "success" of the surge is; Evan Thomas and National Security Correspondent John Barry delve into the growing debate within the military over whether to prepare for big, conventional wars or what Rudyard Kipling called small, "savage wars of peace."

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(Read entire cover package at www.Newsweek.com)